House of Stone
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Sometimes the person being used, and the person doing the using, isn't the one you expected. XMM Ficathon.


**Disclaimer:** Written as my XMM Ficathon challenge entry  
**Summary:** Sometimes the person being used, and the person doing the using, isn't the one you expected.  
**Written for:** Misbegotten  
**Pairing/scenario requested:** This was supposed to be Eric/Mystique. He uses her and this is why she lets him. And it did start that way, but it got out and ran around its own, too. What it became though I hope you like as much as I did.  
**Warnings (if any):** sex and slash references

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Mystique remembers why she joined The Brotherhood of Mutants. It's a decision she affirms every day with her actions and her decisions.

She refuses to consider a world where for being a mutant -a state in which she did not pick or have say in but was born to- she might be treated like those of history. She will not cow tow, as they did, because she;

Would never be hoarded into camps for her race,

Would never wear a star upon her breast for her religion,

Would never make deals with inferiors for inferior rights.

She's given up too much in her life already; she wouldn't give up her skin just to be told she's allowed to live. So Magneto's words fell like golden on the poor when he talked to her of better than equal rights, of freedom, and a place where fear wouldn't be touching their races, or their children, or their children's children.

And if she doubts at the end of the day, the utter passion of his body brings her back.

Deep beneath, and almost gone from the inside, there is Raven. Raven who's name is never spoken by anyone but one here. And he only calls her that at one point. He screams it at the ceiling when her mouth is on him. He whispers it in her sweat-soaked hair when he's inside her. But always at her behest. She pushes him forward more each time, because she fears the only other name he might say if not given something.

It won't be her name.

Either of them.

And Raven can't have that now.

She can take many things and she can give many things. She's taken the looks and the jokes around here with thick skin, thought she gets back each of them for each joke. She lets them look, lets their eyes linger, wears very little if anything, to exalt her own power and her position at his side. She's given up her past and left it far behind the world she walks each day.

Winding through the sheets, laden with dampness, she moves to curl around him. She recoils, mentally and physically, like a snake about to strike, when he throws her off with a wave of one arm. This isn't personal his movements say, though his words won't, yet somehow she expects them every time she lets him call her forth and send her way like she might be his pet. Her eyes brighten and narrow, watching him throw back the blankets and stand.

He says he needs water.

She knows she won't see him again till morning.

Mystique is wanted.

Mystique is different.

Mystique is beautiful.

Mystique is a creature of night.

She could follow, as she has before, but she won't. She knows what she allows already when she lets herself swing open and shut like a dinner hall door. But she is no ones lap dog. And she won't be a replacement for a man's enemy that he lusts after like he can't get enough air to breathe. She's not stupid. He doesn't need to say the name to know the moment he's thinking it. In those moments when it's the most intense, when he looks away because he can't meet her eyes. Besides she's played that role for him before.

Mystique is rebel.

Mystique is deadly.

Mystique is seductive.

Mystique is dangerous.

She tells herself these things at night, left alone to the cold breeze of the hallway where the doors still swings from being thrown open. She pulls the blankets up around her shoulders, each move, conducted of a grace queens couldn't match and an allure that neither lovers nor prostitutes can promise. Her yellow eyes don't scan toward the doorway, they don't even acknowledge it, as her head pillows down on messed up hair.

Mystique is bold.

Mystique is brave.

Mystique is ruthless.

Mystique is heartless.

Her eyes close, but her mind doesn't. In her mind the night brings back the days that have flown beyond. There are things she'd rather not remember. Things, places and people she pushed away so that she might remember her purpose. Because tomorrow will bring more fighting, and she needs to be hearty and ready for it. Ready to use everything at her disposal, from her weapons to her self.

Raven has had a lover who burned her soul completely in their name, too.

Magneto doesn't realize that. He doesn't ask.

He doesn't know she had the most beautiful pale skin and beautiful eyes, just like his lover did. He doesn't know that she was highly educated and could see to the root of any altercation as if it was mist, just like his lover did. He doesn't know she could predict what might happen and would happen just by watching the world around her passively, just like his lover did. He doesn't know they lived languid together in the younger years of their lives, like his lover did.

So she keeps herself quite. She doesn't tell him.

She doesn't tell him that they raised children together. She doesn't tell him that she couldn't accept the changes in her. She doesn't tell him that she ran out of fear and that she could be forgiven and go back at any moment. She doesn't tell him that every night she still hears the ways she would sigh, softly like a child, right before she slipped into a dream. She doesn't tell him that every night they slept together they held hands like lovers enflamed to feats of grandeur and comforted before all safety by that single touch.

In her more honest moment she's glad, because they might have too much in common.

They might realize both their lovers let them go because they couldn't hold on to them watching their hearts grow colder and angrier. They might realize they just need to be told by one person once that it's okay to go back, and then they'd abandon everything just for that chance. They might realize that the things their both seeking and longing for aren't there, no matter how far or hard they dig, except for using each other to open the wounds they keep inside them.

He'd listen if she began to talk, but she won't.

Because Raven knows things that Mystique can't, too.

And Mystique has needs that Raven doesn't.

And Raven knows at the end of the night, while Mystique is licking her recurring wounds, that she and Eric don't want love really when it's all said and done. They just want to feel they can be loved, aren't alone and can connect to something again. Because they can't ever heal, or help, or forget, or run from the love they've never let go or left behind them.

And they don't want to bear another scar on themselves like that one.

Because everything they do is only a pale shadow of it already.

Sunlight streams from the windows in lines through the shades, and Toad is at the door howling something about how she's supposed to somewhere waiting on Magneto already. His tone is sniveling, dripping with jealousy and glee all at once. The top of her sheet is somewhere around her navel and she admonishes him for looking even though she stretches luxuriantly in a way she knows he can't resist.

He smacks his tongue and she slams the door, giving him a reproving look before disappearing to take a shower. No one else wouldn't run when Magneto called for them, but Mystique gets her own sweet time. Most days. She savors the scratches on her back and the bruises on her flesh when it's soft and pale, because it won't be when she shifts out again.

Clean and fresh, she saunters off with an animals grace to where she's been summoned. Magneto, as always when she's late, fixes her with a look of reproval, his lips pressed tight and his eyes touched with something between disappointment and annoyance at having to wait. But she langers in a doorway, quirks her lips into a smirk, with a hand playing against her bare stomach and she asks if their going to save the world today.

As simple as if they'd all been waiting for her.

As simple as if she'd just ask for a single cup of coffee.

There's a pause where she knows the others are waiting for him to snap at her, and it's broken by this soft rumble of amused laughter. He holds a hand out to her, calling her my dear, as he begins to explain today's ins and outs.

And she remembers all at once again why she's here. Why she is part of the Brotherhood of the Mutants and Magneto's, all at once.

Because it's better than the alternative.

She doesn't want to live in a house of glass –built on hope and peace- that breaks with every rock thrown at it. She wants to live in a house of stone –built on strength and defense- knowing that glass will shatter on it and it will go on and on forever.


End file.
